FURTHERMORE, FUCK YOU. Prairie putz James Lileks has enjoyed imagining New York nuked. Now a spate of upcoming national-disaster shows gives him that old feeling:

If they were smart they would run two shows Tuesday and Wednesday night, one set in Midwestern town of medium size, the other set in New York. The latter would collapse into anarchy, I suspect, and the former would do nicely. A town like Fargo, for example, doesn’t need elevators. New York is rather dependent on them. Elevators and money. Take them away, and what do you have? More good people than bad, but guess which side has most of the guns... The Fargo series would be different, of course. Smaller towns tend to be more socially cohesive. Plus, all that wheat and all those guns.

Yeah, we city folk don't know how to handle a shootin' ahrn. And we don't know how to live among people, either, not like the folks in Lileksland:

In Minnesota, local news stations filmed people getting trampled at the front entrance as hundreds poured into a local Wal-Mart. Extreme measures were used in the northwest where some stores used police to control the mob. One policeman in Washington used pepper spray to stop shoppers from endangering each other.

If you fucking hicks can't act civil-like during Black Friday, I shudder to think how you'll handle Doomsday.

As for us, we had a bit of a disaster four years ago. Handled it pretty well. Asshole.

UPDATE. Sample response: "I'm from MN. fuck you." This gentleman is well within his rights. When responding to insults to my hometown, I sometimes fall back on the barroom argumentative style, and forget that other patrons may hear it and take it amiss. Apologies to the good folks all over this great land of ours who are not adult males living at Jasperwood.